Iran wants nuke deal with 'realistic' US

TEHERAN－Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on Monday urged the United States to be "realistic" to help reach an agreement in talks aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

The Iranian diplomat said in a tweet that "the excessive demands "of the US could lead to a pause in the negotiations in Vienna as Iran will "never give in" to such demands.

Amir Abdollahian also pointed out that "an agreement can be reached if the United States is realistic".

Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that the US should be held responsible for the protracted state of the talks in the Austrian capital.

Iran has transmitted its "clear "message to the US through Enrique Mora, the European Union coordinator for the Vienna talks, but no new response has been received from them yet, Khatibzadeh said during a press weekly conference.

"Washington has not yet made a decision on the remaining issues. We do not wait forever. The United States should make its political decisions," he said.

"The United States is responsible for the pause in the negotiations today, (as) in the final stages (of talks), Washington tries to prevent Teheran from the economic benefits of the JCPOA," Khatibzadeh said. "If the United States makes a political decision, an agreement is available."

But in Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price suggested it was Teheran that was not giving way to make a deal possible.

'Opportunity remains'

Price warned that time was running out, as Iran gets closer and closer to the nuclear "breakout" point when it has achieved the capacity to construct a nuclear weapon.

"Anyone involved in the talks knows precisely who has made constructive proposals, who has introduced demands that are unrelated to the JCPOA, and how we reached this current moment," he said. "We still believe there is an opportunity to overcome our remaining differences."

On Sunday, Amir Abdollahian said an agreement was "close" during a phone conversation with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"We have passed on our proposals on the remaining issues to the American side through the EU senior negotiator, and now the ball is in the US court," Iran's top diplomat said.

Iran signed the JCPOA with world powers in July 2015. However, former US president Donald Trump pulled his country out of the agreement in May 2018 and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Teheran. Those actions prompted the Islamic republic to scale back some of its nuclear commitments under the agreement in retaliation.

Since April 2021, eight rounds of talks have been held in Vienna between Iran and the remaining JCPOA parties－China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany－to revive the deal.

Over the past weeks, reports from Vienna suggested that the negotiators were close to an agreement with few key issues remaining that required "political decisions" of the parties.

Xinhua - Agencies